As known, cash recyclers are used for depositing, withdrawing, counting, and tracking cash in a multitude of locations. These locations include banks, retail establishments, check cashing facilities, loan advance locations, casinos, or in other businesses where cash recyclers aid in the process of automated cash handling. Automated cash handling is a process that typically includes a teller opening a cash drawer at the beginning of the day. The teller does this by removing a specified amount of money from the cash recycler. Then at the end of the day, the teller will deposit cash back into the cash recycler. The cash recycler will count the cash and it will be held in the safe inside the cash recycler for safe keeping. A manager has the ability to set the permissions on the cash recycler, in order to limit the options a teller may have, or even prevent access altogether. Cash recyclers may also be used by the business throughout the day for depositing, withdrawing, and exchanging bank notes into different denominations. Typically, in the past, cash recyclers have been located at banks and not in customer facing fashions at remote locations. Therefore, when problems occurred or recycler balances needed to be checked, fixes or balance inquiries were completed quickly, since recyclers were on-site at the bank. More recently, banks began deploying the machines in the back offices of businesses, in order to provide improved cash handling for the businesses and more security for the businesses' money from misappropriation. Furthermore, cash recyclers reduce business costs associated with accounting, handling, and counting the business's cash at the beginning and end of the day.
Currently, if a customer has a remote cash recycler and problems arise with it, the customer must call a technician to come fix the problem. A technician travels to the remote location to troubleshoot the cash recycler and then tries to fix the problem without having any idea about what the problem is before arriving. Furthermore, recycler suppliers have no ability to remotely update the recycler's software or change the recycler's configurable settings when they are located offsite. Instead, a technician is dispatched to the recycler location and performs the necessary updates one recycler at a time. Any recycler updates, particularly mass updates, will not be made in a timely fashion, and thus will be made at great costs. Furthermore, since the recyclers are located off-site, the recycler suppliers, which are usually financial institutions, have no way of tracking the deposits and withdrawals of a recycler on a daily basis. A bank employee must be sent to the site periodically to withdraw or deposit cash regardless of the actual cash recycler balances. As the number of recyclers located remotely increases, the practice of dispatching a technician or bank employee periodically to the remote location will no longer be economically or logistically feasible.
It is necessary to develop a system and associated method for implementing a system that communicates with remotely located cash recyclers in an easy, intuitive, and cost-effective way for system administrators or other users. Remote capabilities would allow the bank to remotely access a cash recycler and perform a multitude of functions without ever having to send a technician to the off-site location.